Good Pay, Good Hours, Friendly people, work with pets, funny customers, easy to talk to manager, flexible hours, easy to request time off, lots of support, teamwork, chances to be recognized for hard work, cool benefits (including discounts on hotels and stuff), tuition help if you're full time

Cons

cleaning up dog messes, sometimes understaffed, hard to get into management, not many pay raises when you've been with the company for a while, schedule doesn't come out until last minute sometimes, no commission, pressure to sell classes, basically impossible to work full time

Advice to ManagementAdvice

I think it's important to offer more full-time employment chances for people willing to stick with the company

Some of the staff are very Animal Centric and would do anything for the pets that frequent the store. They have long been open to domestic partner insurance and benefit programs (especially for management).

Cons

The management and corporate edicts seemed geared towards preventing the associates from earning benefits. Their definition of Part-time is less than 36 hrs a week, so they are told to attempt to schedule each associate for 35.5 hrs, expect them to be flexible on the hours they are available, and won't post a schedule until every Friday. It was expected for the employees to call in on Fridays and Saturdays to get their schedules for Sunday through saturday (NOT a week in advance, meaning that at most you had two days knowledge of whether you worked on a Sunday and what hours.) They pay is very noncompetitive in the larger cities but decent in the small towns. Frequent abuses by management in multiple locations across the country including animal abuses, sexual harassment abuses, and hostile workplace environments. I've worked in Retail Management in several places and locations, and PetSmart seemed to foster a culture of treating the entry-level associates as worthless peons. Profit Profit Profit. Pretend you love Animals! It Sells Better!

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Pay attention to your employee feedback surveys and provide a safer more anonymous means for the associate to give their opinions. I've been there listening to employees complain about fear of reprisal since they have to use their Employee Logins to put in any comments. And take action swiftly, not over a year later, when a member, or members, of management (especially district management, Training stores, etc) has multiple complaints of the same nature.

Got in trouble for leaning against the register booth wall. After working 8 hours, I decided to just LEAN. NOT SIT. LEAN. The manager watches you from his office through security cameras. If he catches you leaning, turned the wrong way, chewing gum, or walking out of the booth, you got a phone call to your register, and chewed out. The word dictatorship came to mind the first week there.

Very serious about the uniform.

Lots of sick, dead animals that people were wasting their money on, then they'd come back and bark about why our animals sucked. Because they died. They always died.

Newest employee is constantly subjected to picking up diarrhea, cleaning urine and vomit, and whatever other bodily fluids that come out of dogs that people just seem to enjoy bringing, despite note walking their dogs or seeing if, oh I dunno, maybe they were sick and throwing up? Common sense isn't that common, surprise surprise! Be prepared to have people bring in their pets for no reason what so ever, except maybe to buy a fish. Yes. It happens a lot. Wonder how that great dane's pile of horse sized feces ended up in front of the neon tetra display tank? That's how.

Cat ladies. Word of advice. Don't ever mention liking cats. Just don't do it. Not if you're 18 years old and have a life outside of your cats, petsmart, and picking up soft, 96 degree (Fahrenheit) dog poo.

Youngest in the store? Lucky you, everyone will remind you of your age every day of the week. Like you don't look in the mirror. Or at your driver's license. Or being born.

The amount of pet food thrown away is disturbing.

Learning how to catch the fastest fish in the store for a guy who is impatient as anyone you'll ever meet. The manager will just sit back and watch you struggle to please this man, all while trying not to kill the fish with my unadulterated fury.

Pets with terrible manners. Having inbred, puppy mill born, parkinson's disease having chihuahua's coming into the store is common, and if they bark incessantly at the air moving, deal with it. Even if they are there for two hours looking at the novelty items.

Manager will most likely be obsessed with his job and will come to the store on his days off. Every single weekend. Even if he lives in the next county over.

Don't do it.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Everyday I drove to work, I didn't wear a seat belt because I hoped I would get into a car accident and die before I got there.